NEW YORK (Reuters) – Condé Nast agreed on Thursday to pay $5.8 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by thousands of former interns at the publisher who said they were underpaid for work at the company’s high-end magazines.

The settlement agreement, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, covers around 7,500 interns at Condé Nast magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair. The case is one in a wave of recent suits brought against media and entertainment companies that pay little or nothing for internships.

(Reuters) – U.S. airlines are suing the Port of Seattle to block planned pay increases for airport workers, in the latest legal battle over efforts to better compensate workers in a state with the highest minimum wage in the country.

The Port commission, which runs the Seattle-Tacoma airport, voted in July to hike the wage floor to $11.22 per hour in January 2015 and $13.00 per hour in 2017 for airport employees.

Nov 11 (Reuters) – The United Auto Workers expect Volkswagen
AG to announce soon a policy change that would allow
for union representation at the company’s plant in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, where the union has faced challenges organizing
workers.

Earlier this year, the UAW lost a vote to represent about
1,500 workers at the Chattanooga plant but the
union still claims it has the support of a majority of the
employees.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Davino Watson languished in a detention center in Buffalo, New York, for 3-1/2 years awaiting deportation on orders from immigration authorities. The only problem: Watson is an American citizen.

Now the Jamaican-born Watson, released in 2011, is suing the U.S. government and a handful of immigration officers in federal court claiming he was unlawfully detained. He alleges officials ignored his repeated claims that he was naturalized and that he would have been released had there been a more thorough investigation into his background.

Nov 3 (Reuters) – In a victory for Honeywell International
Inc, a U.S. judge rejected a bid by the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission to stop the company from imposing
penalties on workers who refuse to be tested as part of a
corporate wellness program.

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery in Minneapolis denied the
EEOC’s request for a temporary restraining order, according to a
court filing on Monday.

Oct 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission has sued Honeywell International Inc to stop
the company from imposing penalties on employees who refuse to
undergo testing under its corporate wellness program.

The lawsuit is the third case since August filed by the
federal agency challenging a corporate wellness program, with
Honeywell the biggest company to be targeted. Wellness programs
that encourage healthier habits have become increasingly popular
in Corporate America, as they promise to improve productivity,
cut absenteeism and reduce medical costs.

NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group on
Wednesday attacked expert evidence offered by attorneys for
former female employees in a U.S. federal sex discrimination
lawsuit, arguing there was no pattern of gender-based pay and
promotion disparities at the bank.

In the first day of arguments in a case launched in 2010, a
lawyer for two former Goldman employees said the Wall Street
giant displayed a “consistent” pattern of sexual bias, while the
bank’s attorney said such accusations were “baseless.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Anthony Reynolds works on what he calls “the SWAT team of airplane cleaners,” scrubbing the seats, carpets and toilets of planes parked overnight at the Philadelphia airport. About a year ago, he joined a drive to organize a union, and Ebola, he says, may help his cause.

Reynolds wants more protective gear and training on how to safely handle bodily fluids, like feces and vomit, and he says that after a passenger coming down with Ebola flew on a U.S. domestic flight, concern is spreading among colleagues.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday on whether companies have to pay workers for time spent undergoing security checks, in a case challenging how hourly employees are compensated for tasks outside their regular shifts.

Employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions, an Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) contractor handling merchandise shipped out of vast warehouses, brought a class action suit in Nevada in 2010 claiming they were forced to spend up to half an hour daily going through security screenings, aimed at protecting against theft, without being paid.

NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) – A funeral home and an eye
clinic that fired employees who had changed their sex from male
to female were sued last week as the U.S. government filed its
first-ever federal lawsuits for transgender discrimination.

The cases could lay the groundwork for more such actions in
the future, legal experts said on Monday.

About Mica

"I cover commodities and general news in Mexico and Central America and as part of the team in Latin America reported on the outbreak of swine flu, a coup in Honduras and the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Before Mexico, I was based in Guatemala for two years."